The "GS-IMTR Mid-Term Report", which has now been finalized, contains a positive interim assessment as well as promising prospects for the future of the "Graduate School Intelligent Methods for Test and Reliability" (GS-IMTR). Launched in 2019 by the University of Stuttgart and Advantest Europe GmbH, the project has already been able to significantly promote research, teaching and knowledge transfer to industry.
Kotaro Hasegawa, Senior VP Applied Research and Venture Team bei Advantest, says: "As a mid–term evaluation, the collaboration has proven to be fruitful for both partners. One of the strengths has been the unique combination of academic expertise and practical industry insight which has been one of the strategic thoughts when establishing the Graduate School. Consequently, significant contributions to both academia and our industry have been made, as demonstrated by an excellent track record of publications."
Academic successes and guest professors
The numbers also confirm this: in three years, the doctoral students published a total of 44 scientific papers. This includes Natalia Lylina's work "A Hybrid Protection Scheme for Reconfigurable Scan Networks", which received a Best Paper Award at VTS'21.
The GS-IMTR has organized two dedicated workshops (IMTR workshops) at ETS 2022 and ETS 2023, the best-attended workshops of the respective event.
Furthermore, the GS-IMTR developed a legally consistent formal procedure to invite Guest Professors for longer periods of time (2-3 months). After the Covid lockdowns, the GS-IMTR invited Prof. Abhijit Chatterjee of Georgia Tech., Atlanta, USA, in 2022 as the GS-IMTR’s first Guest Professor. He shared his research on various aspects of test, security, and neural networks. 2023 was won by Paul Ralph from Dalhousie University, who researches software testing and reliability.
Knowledge transfer in business and teaching
In addition, the "GS-IMTR Mid-Term Report" impressively demonstrates the transfer of knowledge in terms of novel methodologies, software and tools; for example P2 did implement an interactive visualization workflow whereas P7 contributed three novel designs and successful tape-outs of Milimeter-Wave RF components with significantly improved performance.
In addition, the GS-IMTR left a lasting impression on teaching at the University of Stuttgart. In June 2022, the GS-IMTR installed a new Major on "Intelligent Methods for Test and Reliability" in the Faculty’s international M.Sc. program "Information Technology" (InfoTech).
More details and outlook
In addition to reports on ten successful projects as well as further details on teams and organizational structure, the "GS-IMTR Mid-Term Report" offers an outlook on the future of the graduate school. This includes a second round of projects with the four new research fields "Smart Manufacturing in Semiconductor Test," "Test for Advanced and Emerging Technologies,"From Post -Silicon Validation to Production" and "Security, Privacy and Reliability of Testing." Last but not least, GS-IMTR will soon use self-developed ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) to generate research data.